Kenilworth: Remembering a white Christmas and the Blizzard of 1947

Raymond Scheuerer, 86, took six hours to get home from Elizabeth in his big Buick. Photo: Walter Boright (2010).

By Walter E. Boright
KENILWORTH — Following a snowfall on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 1947, Kenilworth residents were enjoying a rare white Christmas. No one, not even the weather man., anticipated just how very white it would turn out to be.
In 1947 people enjoyed new Christmas films such as the “The Bishop’s Wife” starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven; and the “Miracle on 34th Street” featuring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, a very young Natalie Wood, and Kris Kringle portrayed by Edmund Gwenn. It was the year of the re-recording and re-releasing of Bing Crosby’s immortal version of “White Christmas.” A Perry Como rendition also came out in 1947. But these pleasantries soon would be overshadowed by a record setting blizzard no one saw coming.
The weatherman predicted snow “flurries” for the day after Christmas. At about 4 a.m. early Friday morning, Dec. 26, the first few flakes began to fall gingerly and delicately over the lawns, roof tops, and streets of Kenilworth and elsewhere. But before long the tempo would increase to the point that in just 21 hours the region would be buried in more than two feet of snow.
The Elizabeth Daily Journal reported that the Blizzard of 1947 dumped 26.4 inches of snow in the New York metropolitan area, rivaling the famed Blizzard of 1888. The storm was a heavy snow as it came in from the east picking up Gulf Stream moisture. That 1947 snowfall held the record until the Blizzard of 2006 left behind an accumulation of 26.9 inches.
Trains out of New York City were running 12 hours behind schedule. At the Cranford railroad station the Cranford Citizen and Chronicle reported, “Not an unusual sight Friday were droves of Kenilworth residents who gave up waiting for buses, embarked on foot for the distant land. Some of these hikers were picked up by slow moving cars, while more often they paused en route to help drivers out of snow drifts.”
The Chronicle noted at the time that old-timers who were upholding that the Blizzard of 1888 was “the worst snow storm ever to hit the Eastern seaboard” found “little agreement from snowbound and stranded citizens.”
The Chronicle reported, “Conditions made plowing difficult, with a coat of ice under the snow from a previous storm making it hard to obtain traction to move the heavy snow.” That earlier storm on Dec. 23 had made for a white Christmas.
Kenilworth was still a small town at the time with limited resources for such a storm. About half-developed at the time, most homes were located on the north side of the Boulevard. The borough had just taken over the task of picking up household garbage that year and had only one dump truck at its disposal. The borough faced a crisis situation.
Long-time Mayor Max Berzin was leaving office in a matter of days. Councilman Fred V. Pitten was about to succeed him. According to the Chronicle, Pitten and Councilmen Dudley Neville, John Stults and William Lister gathered at the old municipal building with local contractor Sam Vitale. They addressed the challenge that confronted them. They had the borough truck rigged with a plow and were able to procure another truck outfitted with a plow from the Union County Shade Tree Commission, located down at the west end of the Boulevard. Mr. Vitale provided a bull dozer to which “a special large plow blade was welded.” Exhausted, by Sunday night they had opened up every street.
The Chronicle tells us, “Stalled and parked cars gave workers quite a bit of trouble. Of great help in surmounting this difficulty were Theodore and James Koerner and their four-wheel drive jeep, which they used to move obstructing vehicles.”
That same Ted Koener, now 93 years old, has vivid memories of the storm. Interviewed on Dec. 14, 2010, he noted with pride being born in 1917 on one of Kenilworth’s Downtown streets – North 12th St. – and playing there with his younger brother, Jimmy (1919-2008) and how they worked together during the Blizzard of 1947 helping people they knew and total strangers. “Things were a lot different then. People wouldn’t think twice of going out of their way to help one another. That’s exactly what we did on the days of the big snow.”
Ted continued, “I had a brand new four-wheel drive jeep with a straight six engine. As a veteran of WWII I was allowed to buy it new for $550. Image that! My brother and I were still single and living with our parents, Ted and Helen Koerner, at 23 North 21st St. The house was one of those built by John Hiller. We both worked in New York City in a machine shop but were off the day after Christmas. We went outside, put chains on all four wheels, and started helping neighbors shovel out their cars and then used my jeep to push them. The snow was still falling steadily. We had no idea that only about half of it had fallen so far. The snow kept getting deeper as we worked our way up 21st St. to Monroe Ave. When we got to Monroe we headed Downtown with the jeep. The drifts were at least four feet high. The going was not easy.”
“We finally got to our old neighborhood and it seemed we were helping every body. We got to the Wakefields, way down on Monroe Ave., an old-time black family, and helped them move snow so they could get out. We even met one of the Shallcrosses and helped them get going, too. Later we went over to 8th Street and helped out other families like the Scheideggers and the Nevilles. Everyone was in the same fix – cars snow bound everywhere. And the snow kept coming.”
“Next we headed over to the ‘The Park.’ We found people shoveling everywhere.
Cars were buried all along Newark and Passaic avenues. We helped more families like the Baileys, the Knapps, the Glynns, and the Arthurs. There was just so much snow.”
“My dad’s brother, Fred Koerner, had a coal yard on Monroe Avenue and 13th Street. The phone kept ringing from people needing coal. A hundred pound bag cost 35 cents in those days. But he had to keep turning them down because he couldn’t get his truck out. That’s how bad it got.”
“There were no vehicles moving on the road except us in our jeep. I don’t know how many people we helped over those two or three days but it was a lot. And we were glad to do it. Looked for no money; took no money. Heck, it didn’t cost us much; gas was only 18 cents a gallon then. Everyone would make you feel right at home whether you knew them or not. That’s how it was in those days.”
Raymond Scheuerer, an 86-year-old, life-long Kenilworth resident, recalls the blizzard with great clarity. When interviewed on Dec. 12, 2010, he noted that he left for work at the Color Type Co. in Elizabeth at about eight o’clock that morning, Dec. 26, in his big, four-door, 1941 Buick Road Master. He reported that there were a few inches of snow on the ground. “I left work early at three o’clock because the snow was up to the running board by that time. There were cars stuck everywhere. I got to Kenilworth at the Boulevard and 20th Street five hours later at about eight o’clock. I started up 20th Street. for home and it took me over an hour to go those two blocks.”
“I got up to Monroe Avenue. No one had gone up 20th Street any further. The snow was very deep there. I backed up the car in my tracks and then went forward as fast as I could. I did that three times to keep pushing the snow so I could get off and across Monroe Avenue. I left the car there for the night right in front of the old Methodist Church.”
Ray added, “The next day I went out and took a picture of my car. There were people trying to dig themselves out. Still no one had gotten up North 20th Street any further. I had another car, a 1934 Chevy, parked in my parents’ driveway at 224 North 20th St. where I was living at the time. They were Louis and Anna Scheuerer. My mother was the daughter of former Mayor Anthony Grippo and his wife, Retta. The Chevy was close to being completely buried in the snow. I took a picture of that, too.”
“Tony Vitale, our neighbor down the street, came down 20th Street from the direction of Sheridan Avenue with a bulldozer with caterpillar tracks and plowed the street the next day. I remember the loud noise he made when the plow hit the manhole cover and it bounced. I think he stored the bulldozer downtown someplace where other Vitales kept their construction equipment.”
“I was just 23-years-old then. You had to have a shovel around. We survived.”
Note. This is the 16th article in a series by Kenilworth historian Walter E. Boright, Ed. D. Information sources include personal interviews and archives of the Cranford Chronicle and the Elizabeth Daily Journal. Persons with additional information on this or any Kenilworth history topic may contact Dr. Boright at 908-256-5200 or drbori@aol.com.